Some years ago we worked with an educational website. They had links such as Teachers, Students, etc. All seemed very logical and reasonable. Until we started testing tasks.

We gave teachers tasks about putting together some sort of classroom exercise. We expected them to click on Teachers but they kept clicking on Students. Why? Because even though they were teachers they were using the website from a task point of view. They were putting together a student exercise and clicked on Students. With audience-based navigation you’re not sure if the link is FOR the audience or ABOUT the audience.

We have found that where audience-based navigation works well is where the audiences are totally separate, meaning that they have totally different tasks. So, there might be logic to audience navigation on a council website for Business and Citizens. It might also work on a tax website for Individuals and Business.

We worked with one government website that had links such as Seniors, Women, Disabled, Minorities. What if I’m an older woman who is disabled and part of a minority group? I saw an agriculture website that had links Farmers, Exporters, Researchers. What if I’m a farmer who exports and want to do research?

Dell is company that continues to feel like it has lost its way. There are many excellent aspects to the Dell website, but its core navigation is anti-customer.

When I go to the Dell website I want to buy a laptop. What I’m forced to do first is choose For Home or For Small and Medium Business, etc. I don’t want to do that. In tests, I have found that 90% of people don’t want to do that. Not alone is this audience-based navigation irritating; It reduces trust. I’m thinking: ‘If I choose Home, will I get a worse price than if I choose Business?’

Why does Dell do this? Because that’s how it’s organized internally. It forces its internal organization structure onto its customers. In an age of the empowered customer that doesn’t work well.

One of the most irritating things about audience-based websites is that you click down several levels reading bland marketing content only to reach, for example, a generic price list that is for everybody.

For example, when I click on the Schools section of the Dell website I get a whole load of generic content, including the following: “Dell is focused on a complete range of solutions that helps enterprise customers reach TCO and ROI goals.” What has that got to do with Schools?

If you’re considering audience-based navigation, ask yourself these questions:
Are my audiences totally distinct and separate from each other?
Are their tasks totally different?
Do I have the budget and resources to build and maintain unique content for my audiences?

Write links like you would write a heading. Use 8 words or less. Write the link as if it is all the customer will see. You must deliver everything they need in a maximum of eight words.

Avoid a link that describes the format. Links that state Video, PDF, Blog are rarely useful. Describe the task or benefit of the video. Why do organizations link to formats? Because it’s easier. It’s easier to keep all videos together. Blogs are usually managed using a different piece of software than the other website content

Have unique beginnings for all your links. The first 3-4 words are so incredibly important on the Web. If you have a guide on how to install a router, write the link: “Installation instructions”. Don’t write “How to install this router”. Otherwise you’ll have lots of links beginning with “How to”. Lead with the need.

A link is a promise from you to your customer. It is a signpost. You are giving directions. Let’s say you’re a tourist in Ireland and you want to visit Middleton in Cork. You see a sign labeled “Frequently Visited Towns”. Should you follow it?

The Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) link is a very poor one. The FAQ is a classic example of organization-centric thinking. The organization knows which questions are frequently asked or not. But how can the customer know? Much, much better to use links such as Buy, Install, Troubleshoot, Fees, Specifications, Programs, Contact.

Treat links as steps in a task. Thinking linking is about thinking task completion. A customer clicks on a link as part of a journey to complete a task. Only if they complete their task does everything work. So make sure all the links in the task path work well.

On any particular page every single link should be unique, independent, distinct, separate. Links create tremendous confusion when they overlap. On the homepage of Vodafone Ireland support pages the first two major links are: “Phones & plans” and “Smartphones & apps”. That’s confusing. Because a smartphone is still a phone.

Ideally, group all related navigation links together on a particular page. So, if you’re on a page for a particular product, don’t have some of the links for this product in the left column and some in the right and some in the center. The customer won’t know where to look.

Do not use Infinity and Beyond links such as Resources and Tools. These are like websites within websites. When you need to book a flight are you looking for a tool? Many British government websites use “Do It Online” as a way to organize links. What exactly does that mean?

Avoid audience-based linking where possible. Only use audience-based navigation where the audiences have totally different tasks.

Never use Quick Links. What exactly does that mean? Are the other links Slow Links? And if you have Useful Links do you also have Useless links?

If you can master linking you can master the Web.

If you’re trained as a content professional then you’re trained to think about documents, manuals, articles, brochures. You’re focused on sentences and paragraphs.

One of the latest crazes on the web is “curation,” which seems to be about assembling your list of favorite links. This, of course, is not new. That’s how Yahoo started out in the early Nineties, and Google is essentially a list of links.

Creating new content through linking to and organizing other content is far from being a new human activity. A lot of rap music is about sampling other music and integrating it into a new form. Folk and Blues music is often a pastiche of borrowed lines and melodies.

The Web is a perfect platform for linking and connecting. It is a skill that needs to be developed much more by web professionals because the number one reason websites fail is confusing menus and links.

Jared Spool is touring a a talk at the moment called ‘The Secret Life of Links’. He makes the point that when it comes to websites everything hinges on the link. Jared also discusses how on many sites there is an inverse relationship between the importance of the link to the customer and the amount of space allocated to it by the organization.

He uses the Walgreens site as an example. There are 5 links on the page that account for 59% of traffic. These 5 links are allocated 3.8% of the homepage. This is quite common. Organizations are forever pushing stuff that customers don’t want. Most organizational homepages are a mixture of brochure and highway billboard design.

I was recently looking at the Vodafone Ireland support site. It’s getting better but there is still room for improvement. For example, when I go to the Apple 4S support section, it tells me: “View guides and download manuals specifically for your phone.” For starters, I don’t want to view “guides or download manuals”. I want to solve a problem. And assuming I will find the answer to my problem in these guides and manuals, I don’t want to read that statement, I want to act.

“View guides and download manuals specifically for your phone” is classic print thinking. Quality web links would say ‘Troubleshoot, Install, Configure, Accessories’. At minimum, it should be a link that says “download user manual” rather than telling me I can download the manual and then forcing me to go search for the download link.

Remember: web content should not be a murder mystery. The invention of links eliminates the need to make statements such as: “On this page you will find information on.” We need to delete text that describes the activity ahead and instead present the activity through a link or some other active element. People want to act immediately on the Web. They want to get moving. The mouse is always hovering, hungry to click.

Jared Spool: The Secret Lives of Links

You are what you curate: Why Pinterest is hawt

Imagine for a moment a terrible virus was unleashed on the world that caused babies to die at birth. Imagine that this virus had been raging for 12 months and that during this period every baby in the world died at birth. Now imagine that one morning a baby is born and doesn’t die immediately. That would be news, wouldn’t it?

So many people I meet today are pessimistic. I was talking to a bunch of Irish teenagers and they told me that all their friends are really pessimistic. And yet, despite the recent downturn, Ireland has never been more prosperous.

“The life expectancy of Irish people has seen a rapid and unprecedented increase in the past 10 years, according to a new Department of Health report,” states irishhealth.com. How does the Irish media respond to such stories? Either by ignoring them or accentuating the negative with headlines like: “Population over 65 to double in 30 years?.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in working with websites since 1994 it is: do NOT trust your instincts. Human instincts are incredibly poorly equipped to deal with a modern, complex world.

We may have a financial crisis in Europe today but it is not even remotely comparable to crises that have hit Europe down through the centuries. Globally, the world has never been more peaceful or prosperous.

Most people I tell this to think I’m mad. “Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth,” Steven Pinker writes in The History of Violence.

But look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria. True, but look at the global reaction to Syria, for example. Today, it is much less acceptable for the Syrian government to kill innocent civilians. 40 years ago they would have killed 10 times more people and nobody would have known or cared.

In his new book, “Too Big to Know,” David Weinberger writes about how the Internet is the most amazing source of knowledge and collective intelligence the world has ever known. It would not be the first time the availability of recorded knowledge drove progress. The printing press was a truly revolutionary object.

I certainly feel very lucky to be alive today. There has never been a better time to educate yourself. We are not nearly as dependent on ‘experts’. In fact, what we are finding out now is that many experts are not that expert at all. That is not to say that we do not need genuine experts but even those must collaborate today with others in order to address our ever complex world.

“In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire,” Steven Pinker writes. The crowds absolutely loved it.

Irrational exuberance is certainly not good but pathological pessimism solves nothing. We should learn from our mistakes and feel lucky to be alive during this greatest period in human history.

Irish life expectancy increasing

A History of Violence

Are we on information overload?

Over the years I have designed hundreds and hundreds of surveys. I have looked at a lot of survey tools. Some were terrible, many were okay, but SurveyMonkey is by far the best. In fact, SurveyMonkey is one of the best things I have ever found on the Web.

As 2011 comes to a close, SurveyMonkey is valued at $1 billion; it’s worth every cent. It is literally a joy to use. During my career I have worked with many people in designing surveys. I don’t think there has ever been an occasion when I had to train someone on SurveyMonkey. People just figured it out for themselves. It just worked.

I have also recently bought an iPhone. While I do not subscribe to the Cult of Steve Jobs, I must say it is a beautiful device. Using it is a delight, whereas my Nokia smartphone was such a chore.

Steve Jobs could often be heard to say: “It just works.” Think about that statement for a moment. Imagine if a car company used it. “Our cars just work.” Wow! That would be a big selling point. Or a TV manufacturer. “Our TVs just work.”

In the world of the Web and the world of technology in general, something that just works is still big news. Something to tell your friends about. Because it’s still a relative rarity to find things that just work, that are easy to use.

Easy to use is a tsunami that is ripping across the world. We customers expect that it will just work. And if it doesn’t we get very annoyed. Great web brands understand that.

I buy quite a bit of music stuff from Thomann. Excellent service. Great prices. Easy to use. After you submit your order you get a nice page explaining exactly what happens next. Here’s a sample of what it says: “If additional items cross your mind which you would like to add to your order, you can submit another order. We will add the new items to your existing order, as long as it has not yet been shipped. We’re always anxious to help you avoid additional shipping costs.” That’s customer service.

Thomann gets my business, just like Amazon. I buy a lot from Amazon. A couple of weeks ago I sent them a query. Within 10 minutes they had replied. Anytime I have ever contacted Amazon they responded quickly and professionally. What more can you ask for?

I use Go To Meeting for online meetings and webinars. Great service, easy to use, value for money. A while ago I had a problem. It was complicated. The support person said to me: “No rush. I’m going to stay on this problem until you’re completely satisfied.” Am I loyal to Go To Meeting? Absolutely.

Great web brands are all about ease of use and service and support. They are run by people with service hearts. They make your day that little bit easier and in small but important ways add to quality of life.

It was a hot summer evening in Houston. I was walking to the car park with John, a member of an intranet team for a large organization. “Management doesn’t care how long it takes us to book a meeting room,” he said resignedly. “They just think we can work longer, later.”

I was sitting in the office of the head of IT for another large organization; “If you tell me that you can save me a man year,” he said with a smile on his face, “I want to know which man I can fire.”

Another senior manager scoffed at the idea of saving five minutes every time a member of staff wanted to find a location. “They could be out smoking a cigarette during that five minutes,” he said.

Time is the essence of the world we live in. It is the most scarce resource. Those who manage time well will triumph. This is nothing new. The original management concepts by Frederick Taylor et al were focused on the management of the time of factory workers.

One thing Taylor noticed was that the longer you made people work, the less productive they became. They resented the long hours and found ways to take their time back, by taking longer breaks or continuously talking on the job. In one factory he reduced the working day from 11 hours to 8 and productivity shot up. Taylor had quickly realized that it’s not the quantity of time people work but the quality of work they do during the hours they are working.

The modern offices we work in today are about as efficient as the factories that Taylor walked into in the late Nineteenth Century. A French company, Atos, has recently announced that it is seeking to ban email in order to reduce inefficiency. Atos also claimed that 25 percent of staff time is spent looking for information. I read a quote from an Intel manager saying that employees lose a day a week trying to find the right person.

The problem is getting worse. Marc Peter, director of technology at LexisNexis which conducted an International Workplace Productivity study in 2010, told Fox News that an increasing number of employees are reaching “breaking point”. Where is management, particularly senior management?

To start solving the problem we need a transformation in management culture. “I don’t have a problem finding people,” a CEO once told me. Obviously he didn’t. He had a secretary.

We have to start taking employee time seriously. Intelligent management is about getting the most out of every hour an employee works, not about getting as many hours as possible out of the employee.

A couple of weeks ago I walked with a group to a hotel meeting room. “It’s much easier to book a meeting room in this hotel than in our own offices,” an employee told me. What were the chances of the booking process being simplified, I asked? She just laughed.

Information Overload Is Causing Illness and Costing Money, Experts Warn

Staff to be banned from sending emails

In a world where people have lots of time and there is very little education and very little information, traditional marketing and advertising thrives. We are not living in that sort of world.

The Celtic Tiger has gone missing. Good riddance many would say. I have a totally opposite opinion. The Celtic Tiger period drove a renaissance for Ireland. Out went the old, the narrow, the bigoted, the reactionary, the corrupt, and in came a new, confident, skeptical, optimistic, entrepreneurial, educated Ireland. Despite the current difficulties, Ireland is a vastly better country than the one I grew up in.

The old Ireland was an advertiser’s dream: Poorly educated, willing to be led, the Irish were very brand loyal. Which meant that brands charged significantly more than they did in the UK. The Irish, you see, didn’t feel confident enough to compare. We just bought what the TV told us to buy, just like we voted for the political party our father voted for. It was a marketer’s dream.

That was then. This is now. Ireland has caught up with the rest of the modern world and is now much less brand loyal. The tools of the organization have become the tools of the customer. The methods of the organization have become the methods of the customer.

Organizations do research on their customers. Now customers do research on organizations. Organizations market and brand themselves. Now customers market and brand themselves through social media. Organizations record and publish; Now customers record, publish, tweet, blog. Organizations advertise. Now customers advertise.

When I go to Google and place “Dublin Rio flight” into the search box, I am placing an ad; A very specific, directed ad. I am saying to the airlines that I want the best price and the best flight option between Dublin and Rio. It’s an ad.

What I want back is a response to my ad. I want to see your prices, your options. I want to know if there are direct flights. Pay attention! Because if you don’t pay attention to my specific need right now, I’m gone. Bye.

Now, what do you think are the chances of me seeing an ad for the Nikon 5100 camera while I am in the process of finding the best flight from Dublin to Rio?

It’s hard to use the Web without knowing what you want to do, where you want to go. The Web is not a Sunday walk. When was the last time you went to Google and said: “I just don’t know what to search for. My doctor said I should search at least once a day; that it’s good for my health. Somebody please give me a word?”

When you are a marketer or a communicator and the customer is communicating at you, how does that change your world? When you are an advertiser and it is you who are being advertised at, how does that change your world?

The customer is trying to get your attention. Are you watching? Are you listening? Are you paying attention? Are you ready to respond? The customer is the advertiser now.

Tom’s heart sank. Another new manager. He’s seen it all so many times before. “What exactly do you mean by interactive,” Mr Daehria?”
“Call me Bartholemew, boy! Or better still, call me Bart. But, whatever you do, don’t call me early in the morning. I’m not joking. Don’t call me before 11. Now, what was your question?”
“What do you mean by interactive?”
“We have to engage the customer more. We need to increase our hit rate. Bring them back. Keep them on our website a lot longer. More news. More images. More video. White text on a black background. I love black backgrounds. So cool! Different. Innovative. Stickiness, that’s what we need!”
“But we sell waste management products. And …” Bart stared at Tom and then shook he head. He now started to talk to Tom as if he was addressing a 7-year-old. (He had begun the conversation speaking to Tom as if he was a 12-year-old.)
“You don’t understand much about marketing, do you, boy. You don’t sell the sausage. You sell the sizzle. You make them smell it. I mean, look at this homepage,” Bart said contemptuously. “What’s that big ugly thing doing up in the top left corner?”
“It’s a product finder.”
“It’s ugly. Get it off the page.”
“But that’s what customers want, Mr. Daehria. We have lots of research to prove it.”
“Research!? Did Steve Jobs do research!? The customer doesn’t know what they want. Steve Jobs never did a day’s research in his entire life. We need to be more like Apple. More interactive.”
“Could you give me some examples of interactivity, Mr Daehria.”
“Phew. Do I have to do your job for you? Moving stuff, you know. Video, avatars, news. We need more news. The homepage should be constantly changing.”
“But we don’t have news.” Bart shook his head and tapped his nose.
“There always news if you look hard enough.” Bart laughed suddenly. “I haven’t told you, have I? Roger is going to blog.”
“Who’s Roger?”
“Our venerable CEO!”
“What’s he going to blog about?”
“16th Century Vietnamese terracotta field mice.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s his hobby; Roger is a real expert. He’s been collecting them since he was 79.”
“But what’s that got to do with waste management?”
“Everything, my dear boy, everything. It’s about putting a human face on waste. Making people feel warm.”
“Will Mr Thornbrew have time to blog?” Bart laughed. Now he started talking to Tom as if he was a 5-year-old.
“Blog? Roger won’t actually write the blog.”
“Who will?”
“You will,” Bart said, jabbing Tom in the chest with his slightly chubby forefinger.
“But I know nothing about 16th Century Vietnamese terracotta field mice. And social media is about being authentic and useful. And …”
“Oh, young people these days,” Bart said softly and then sighed deeply. “What sort of education system do we have? Do some research, Tom. You love to do research, don’t you,” and Bart winked mischievously.
“Some research,” Tom said and sighed resignedly.
“But first get rid of that ugly … What did you call it?”
“Product finder. And what should we put in its place?”
“A hero shot!!!” Bart shouted and walked out of the office.

If a Norwegian man is sitting on the toilet reading the news on his iPhone, is he mobile? Well, research indicates that one of the most favored places where Norwegian men use their phones is on the toilet. iPads are used a lot on the couch but the iPhone is more popular in bed.

Mobile is not necessarily mobile. It is flexible, convenient, fast, and private. Pictures of sexually transmitted diseases are often accessed through mobile devices. This could be because mobile is particularly favored by young people. It could also be because a phone is more private than a computer. A number of people might have access to the computer you use, for example.

I’ve read that mobiles will be used a lot this Christmas, particularly for last minute gifts. That implies that people using them may need advice on what to buy, because by definition they will not be buying for themselves.

“Desktop copywriting must be concise. Mobile copywriting must be even more concise,” Jakob Nielsen writes in his article ‘Mobile UX Sharpens Usability Guidelines.’ We need more than content reeducation according to Jakob. “The feature set should be much smaller for a mobile site than for a desktop site.”

However, the customer is not always in a hurry. Some people read more on their smart phones than they read on websites. So, one of the most important links any mobile website can have is a link back to the main website.

A major weakness of organizations is that they behave reactively rather than strategically. “We need a mobile app.” “We need to be on Twitter.” “We need more video.” “We need to blog.”

Web strategy is far more about psychology than technology, blogs, Twitter or any other forms of content. The more people use the Web to live their lives and do their jobs, the more web professionals need to invest in understanding human behavior. This is because the Web removes the human touch points, the opportunities to observe, the empathy zones.

There is so much we learn when we are physically in the presence of our customers. If I were hiring a web professional the greatest attribute I would look for is empathy; the ability and desire to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. A web professional should have a service heart.

What are Norwegian men doing with their smart phones when they are on the toilet? What do people typically do when they are on the couch? Do the tasks change when they get into bed?

Free webinar. November 28: Mobile devices and top tasks

Mobile UX Sharpens Usability Guidelines

Lulu is a musical collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica. Rarely has a new album received such extremely nasty and sustained abuse from the majority of fans and critics.

I happen to think Lulu is a dark, brooding, towering, monumental masterpiece; one of the top 10 albums I have ever heard. (Warning: this is disturbing piece of work. It is definitely not for everybody.)

Even though I’m a big Lou Reed fan, I wasn’t even going to buy the album based on the initial reviews I read. Google and Amazon helped me change my mind. Imagine the pre-Google days, when I would have read one, maybe two, reviews in print. Now I could scan hundreds. With Amazon I could see what fans were saying.

I wondered how people could hate something so much. I mean, if something is really bad, the best put down is to totally ignore it. So, I figured Lulu was definitely worth a listen. That was about eight days ago and I’ve been listening nonstop since.

We live in an amazing time. Never before has there been such a vast source of human opinion that can be tapped with ease. The Amazon review system is a thing of beauty. It represents some of the best web design ever and it is, like most great web design, the design of words.

However, even Amazon’s review system is not perfect. To mix up its order of presenting reviews it uses the “people found the following review helpful” function. This generally works much better than ranking by newest or by star rating.

The problem with Lulu is that Metallica have millions of utterly devoted fans who hate Lulu with a furious passion and love all the reviews that express the same hatred and contempt.

The result is that, at 155 reviews, all the full reviews presented on the first page were deeply negative. You have to scan the right column review snippets before you see anything positive.

If you dig a bit you see that Lulu is the ultimate polarizing album. As I write this article, there are: 20 5 star reviews, 14 4 star, 6 3 star, 4 2 star and 71 1 star. So, there’s no middle ground, just two extremes, and that’s a very interesting thing to discover. Amazon exudes transparency and truth in the truest sense of the word. ‘Here’s what people think. Make up your own mind.’

Many complain that the crowd is ignorant and that we should ignore them and listen to the experts. However, the majority of critics fell over themselves to give Lulu 1 star reviews.

I’m currently watching a superb documentary DVD box set on art by BBC’s Simon Schama. (Now, Schama is what I would call a real critic.) The last one I saw was on David Turner and focused on his painting, The Slave Ship. When it was first exhibited most critics were bewildered and dismissive, with one saying it reminded them of “a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes.”

Not much changes when it comes to most critics. The experts are as much a mob as the mob is. What has utterly changed is our ability to navigate the sea of criticism.